Writing in the Sand (1991)
45mins
Winner of the Le Prix du Documentaire at the Cinéma du Réel festival in Paris, this is a timely and powerful reminder of our interdependence with the natural world. Constructed almost entirely from Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s black and white photographs, it evokes the magic of a family day out on the windswept beaches of North East England. It is packed with action, invention and surprise: bodiless heads sticking out of the sand; teenagers jumping in the sea fully clothed; family picnicking under a blanket. Memory and fantasy intermingle with expressions on intoxicating freedom and quizzical encounters with nature: when a forewarning is ignored, a sunny daydream turns unexpectedly into a nightmare and the sea breaks into an awesome display of fury and pain, with a strange metamorphosis taking place on the shore.
+
Mai (1973) 30 mins
A portrait of eccentric and obsessive collector (or compulsive hoarder) Mai Finglass, born to Irish-Persian parents in India in the 1890s. Mai’s house in Elgin Avenue was filled with her treasures to the point where doors were permanently jammed, so she rented a house in Shepherds Bush, where the kitchen was shared with a family of hedgehogs.
Laurie (1978) 25 mins
A documentary short on South Shields-born, self-taught sculptor Laurie Wheatley as he produces a sculpture of a welder. With a wryly philosophical outlook, he discusses his thoughts on life, art - Wheatley was part of a broader movement that included the Ashington Painters and the work that came out of the Spennymoor Settlement - and his own story.
Part of a season on Amber Film Collective’s documentaries
Showing as part of this season: Early Shorts (1969-1974), Byker (1983) + Today I’m With You (2010), T Dan Smith (1987) + Shorts, From Marks & Spencer to Marx and Engels (1988) + From Us to Me (2016), Writing in the Sand (1991) + Shorts
Presented by Wavelength
F: facebook.com/wavelengthdocs
T: @wavelengthdocs
dir. Amber
year: 1973-83
country: UK
total run-time: 100 minutes
Doors 6.45pm
Film 7.15pm
£6.00/Concessions (Pay What You Can)
“Alongside Ken Loach, Amber are the last great (working) class warriors of British film... They make movies in the north-east about a way of life that is rapidly disappearing, and one that is rarely represented on screen: sea coalers, fishermen, harness racers are just a few of the subjects they have tackled over the past 30 years. But there is more to their movies than history. They are funny and moving, political and challenging, and as real as it gets.”
“Part-art cinema, part-documentary, Amber’s evolving humanist aesthetic has produced a body of work that in its integrity, honesty and commitment, remains one of the great unsung achievements of British cinema.”
“The often strikingly unreconstructed and old-school north-east working-class culture is one which Amber’s films and photography has documented, chronicled, celebrated and dramatised over the past 47 years”